We help organisations move from assumption to measurable clarity.
Awareness Academy is led by Zac Parish.
Founder & Director | Workforce Performance, Resilience & Leadership
Zac Parish is the Founder and Director of Awareness Academy, supporting organisations to improve workforce performance, resilience, leadership capability, and decision-making under pressure. His work focuses on helping organisations identify burnout risk, strengthen leadership effectiveness, and improve organisational performance through evidence-based assessment and targeted intervention.
Drawing on behavioural science, resilience frameworks, leadership development, and performance psychology, Zac works with leaders and teams operating in complex and high-pressure environments. His approach combines practical implementation with measurable outcomes across individual, team, and organisational performance.
Zac spent 6 years as a Buddhist monk, an experience that continues to inform his work in attention training, self-awareness, emotional regulation, and resilience under pressure. Over the past two decades, he has worked across leadership development, behavioural change, wellbeing, and workplace performance, helping organisations move from assumption to measurable clarity.
Employee surveys often capture sentiment, not systemic performance and health.
Lifestyle Medicine, Recovery & Human Performance
Dr Patterson Stark brings more than 30 years of clinical and applied experience in lifestyle medicine, health optimisation, resilience, and long-term performance. Following his own recovery from terminal illness, he has spent decades refining practical approaches to health, recovery, energy management, and sustainable performance.
He is triple board certified and a Fellow of the Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine (ASLM). His work focuses on translating evidence-based lifestyle medicine and behavioural science into practical interventions that improve health outcomes, resilience, recovery, and workplace performance.
Within the Awareness Academy, Patterson provides expertise in the biological and behavioural drivers of energy, recovery, stress regulation, and sustained human performance, helping organisations better understand the relationship between health, resilience, and performance outcomes.
Within the Awareness Academy, Patterson leads the integration of physiological performance ensuring that workforce performance is supported at a biological level.
Psychology, Behaviour Change & Performance
Bianca Smeekes brings over a decade of experience across psychology, behavioural science, and applied performance. Her work focuses on resilience, emotional regulation, behavioural change, psychological safety, and improving performance under pressure.
Bianca combines formal training in psychology and neuroscience with practical experience delivering programmes, facilitating groups, and supporting behavioural change across workplace environments in New Zealand and internationally.
Within the Awareness Academy, Bianca focuses on translating psychological insight into practical strategies that strengthen resilience, improve communication, support behaviour change, and build sustainable individual and team performance. Her work helps organisations turn insight into consistent, measurable action.
She has worked across both individual and group settings, translating psychological theory into practical tools that can be applied in real-world environments. Within the Awareness Academy, Bianca focuses on behavioural capability and individual performance, helping translate insight into consistent, measurable action.
Strategic Partnerships Advisor | International Relationships & Growth
Oliver Harris brings more than 25 years of international experience developing strategic relationships, building partnerships, and connecting organisations with opportunities for growth. Having worked across more than 60 countries, he brings a wealth of experience spanning enterprise technology, telecommunications, education, and other sectors.
His strengths include engaging senior business and government leaders, navigating complex stakeholder environments, and identifying opportunities for strategic collaboration. He combines commercial insight with a strong understanding of international markets, helping organisations align their objectives, establish valuable partnerships, and develop relationships that deliver long term value.
Within Awareness Academy, Oliver advises on strategic partnerships, senior client relationships, and opportunities to connect the organisation’s workforce resilience, leadership development, and organisational performance programmes with the needs of businesses and their leadership teams.
Our team comprises industry veterans and psychological researchers who bring academic rigour to every organisational intervention.
Every organisation is unique. We customise our training frameworks to align with your specific industry pressures and cultural goals.
We don't guess. Our methodology is built on quantifiable metrics that track psychological safety and performance outcomes over time.
Psychology, Behaviour Change & Performance
Healthcare & High-Pressure Clinical Settings
Corporate & Enterprise Organisations
Finance, Legal & Professional Services
Technology,
IT & Digital Teams
Government
& Public Sector
Understand exactly where your workforce is struggling — and what to do about it.